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Crazy cat lady checking in

Confession: I call myself a crazy cat lady so other people won’t poke fun at me and say it to me.

I do love cats. I adore them. I also adore dogs. I would have puppies running around my house if I could but let’s be honest, cats are much, much easier to take care of. All they do is sleep, eat and poop. I just read this article written by a fellow “crazy cat lady” and now I understand why it actually bothers me deep down inside when people slap that title on me. Please read the article before continuing in order to understand what I’m about to write.

Now, if you’re just too lazy to read it, this is the article in a nutshell: the author doesn’t understand why young mothers (or mothers in general) are accepted in society by constantly talking about their babies, but when a single, childless woman talks about her cat, she is seen as weird. The cat essentially takes the place of a baby but it isn’t as “normal” as never-ending baby talk because it’s an animal.

So let’s get this straight. I’ll be the first person to call myself a crazy cat lady. But I only really began doing so over the past few years because other people called me that when I started becoming vocal about my adoration of the cute little felines. I have one cat. Read that again: one. I have raised her from the time she was 6 weeks old, taught her to use her litter box and (a little unwillingly) offered up my boobs as a place for her to knead her claws since her real mom wasn’t available. I am this cat’s mother and I am proud. I call her my baby. But why is that?

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Children are something I desperately want. And yes, I have baby fever right now. But I am constantly slammed with, “Don’t get married young!” “You don’t want kids now!”

And then I’m laughed at for projecting my nurturing and loving instincts on an animal who needs it.

Marriage, pregnancy…that’s something I obviously have not achieved yet. I would love to have a small child snuggled up in my arms every night, smelling like baby powder and making cute little gurgling noises. But I don’t have it. So why not give the love I have bottled up to a cat, dog, fish, whatever? If you can spam Facebook with pictures every two hours of your darling little boy, then I can post all the cat pictures I want. Good riddance.